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Topic: honey this year? (Read 2265 times)

My two hives I started this year - both packages - 1 I installed in mid may the other late may - seem to be coming along good. I checked them this weekend and both hives have drawn out all the frames of both deep hive body's. (I just installed the second deeps a couple weeks ago). Question is - Should I start supering these hives and is there enough time for them to give me any type of honey harvest? Also I was wondering - is there a problem with me using all Deeps on hives or would you recommend using mediums - I just thought it may be easier to interchange parts (frames / boxes) if I keep them all the same. If I could start over I would have used all mediums - but thinking about just using all deeps now - any comments on this? Thanks for any info.

First off...don't use all deeps. Go all mediums. You are right about the interchangabiltiy. Besides that, you'll be taking less pain medication in the future.

As far as your supering....hard to answer that question without knowing your location. If you are from a warmer climate, you don't need to save as much honey for wintering bees. If you are in North Dakata...well...you will want a lot for them.

Like I said, you MAY be able to get something from them, but don't hold your breath. It's all going to depend on how much they are going to need for winter, how much they produce during the summer, etc. Once your second deep gets about 7/10ths full, add a super. If you can keep it for yourself, bonus, if not, there's always next year.

We have an apiary up here that uses all deeps (at least they did last time I checked). They have a lot of them stacked 10 high. That's insane. You'd need a step ladder to perform inspection. I guess it works for them though.

I use all deeps, but I don't recommend this for everyone. What's right for me, may not be right for everybody. I do harvest full deeps of honey, but I don't stack them more than four high at a time, I harvest honey on a regular basis instead of waiting to do it all at the end of the season.

If you have 'winter', then no - probably don't count on taking honey off this year. Here in N. Wis., I had 2 hives lost to starvation last winter with 2 deeps full of honey for them. I'll be feeding all my hives this fall as long as I can.

As far as box sizes - lots of discussion about this lately. I can see where using only one size box thru-out your apiary makes life easier. I don't extract honey, so my honey supers are shallow (comb honey), my brood boxes are deeps. I can swing the deep brood boxes around, but I can also see that if I were running dozens of hives that would get really old, really fast. Deeps full of honey are VERY heavy - much heavier than deeps as brood boxes.

I can echo alot of what is being said by others here. Using deeps will wear you out. I posted in another thread recently, that I pulled a dozen deeps of capped honey. It was work I can assure you. Proper lifting techniques are required, or you may injure yourself. Lift with your legs, not your back or arms. Carry them close to your body, and turn with your legs, not your upper body. Set them down the same way. You only get one back in this life. The big muscles of the legs are made for lifting. The small muscles in the back are not. We get lazy and pick things up from above the waist. An injury just waiting to happen.

I have a deep that has only about five full frames of honey in it and it is very heavy.The thoughts I had of doing all deeps flew right out the window.Its like comiting spinel sueside.The thought of lefting very many boxes like this is nuts.

So would any of you recommend that I feed Sugar water to the bees to get them to draw out the comb on the supers - or will they do it w/o being fed sugar water? I guess I am curious - since I probably will not get any honey this year, but looking forward to next year - If I dont have any supers drawn out - or very few frames in the supers - will the bees still produce a good honey crop next year even thought they will have to draw out the comb? Maybe I don't know what I am talking about - but if any of you can tell me how you guys do it. I was also thinking on my Supers of using thin foundation or no foundation at all - will this work out better? Another thing - when I added the second deep to both my hives - I had moved a frame of drawn w/ bees to it - to get the bees to start working the other frames. If I go mediums - then I won't be able to do this, will the bees eventually start working them? Thanks again for all of your replies and info.

Bee optimistic! I started my first hive this spring (end of Apr) and I extracted 36lbs of honey(very clear wild flower honey) from one super (10 frame medium) June 17th. I expect to extract another super(10 frame medium) at the end July or first of Aug.

You can put supers on if you want it might actually help with ventilation. What you will find is that the bees will move up when and if they are ready. You could try sugar I don't think they would take it.